Attachment A

Amtrak On-Time Performance: 4th Quarter of FY 2011

(data covers October 1, 2010 through September 30, 2011

Test L: Test 2:
On-Time Percentage Constant or Better] =
(compared to prior year period and target) Effective Speed | Indicates
Change in MPH | both tests
Change | FY 2011 Change | from October 2008| were met
Amtrak | from Prior OTP from OTP [Baseline for Last 4| for OTP
oP Year Target Target Quarters Progress
Northeast Corridor Service (Goal proposed for FY 2012: 95%)
Acela 84.0% 3.5% 93.6% (9.5%) (0.8)
Regional Service 79.1% 43% 91.6% (12.5%) (0.0)
Other Corridor Services (Goal proposed for FY 2012: 90%. Min target for FY 2011: 85%)
Adirondack 61.2% (1.0%) 85.0% (23.8%) (0.5)
Blue Water 54.5% (14.2%) 85.0% 30.5%) 19
Capitols 94.9% 1.7% 86.9% 79% 18 v
Carolinian 63.4% 14.5% 85.0% (21.6%) (0.0)
Cascades 70.0% (3.0%) 85.0% (15.0%) 0.5
Downeaster 75.5% 4.6% 87.6% (12.1%) (1.4)
Empire Service 84.5% (1.5%) 86.3% (1.8%) 0.6
Ethan Allen Express 60.6% | (14.2%) | 85.0% (24.4%) (08)
Heartland Flyer 75.1% (6.3%) 85.0% (9.9%) 0.1
Hiawatha 88.3% (1.2%) 89.8% (1.5%) (0.6)
Hoosier State 59.8% (14.9%) 85.0% (25.2%) 1.8
lini 55.0% (7.9%) 85.8% (30.8%) 21
Mlinois Zephyr 88.5% (4.3%) 85.0% 3.5% (0.8)
Keystone 88.4% 13% 89.1% (0.6%) (0.1)
Lincoln Service 64.4% (7.8%) 85.0% (20.6%) Lo
Maple Leaf 57.6% | (11.4%) | 85.0% (27.4%) (a)
Missouri Services 85.7% (5.4%) 85.0% 0.7% 5.9
Pacific Surfliner 77.6% 1.2% 87.0% (9.4%) (0.3)
Pennsylvanian 85.1% (5.0%) 86.3% (1.2%) (0.6)
Pere Marquette 51.5% | (1.7%) | 85.0% (33.5%) 2.0
Piedmont 80.2% 11% 86.9% (6.6%) 23 v
San Joaquins 89.5% (1.2%) 85.6% 3.9% 0.8
Vermonter 78.3% | (7.3%) | 85.0% (67%) a7
Wolverines 19.8% (41.6%) 85.0% (65.2%) G.9)
| Long Distance Trains (Goal proposed for FY 2012: 85%. Minimum target for FY 2011: 78.8%)
Auto Train 89.9% 2.9% 80.4% 94% 09 v
California Zephyr 41.5% | (11.1%) | 78.8% (37.3%) (3)
Capitol Limited 49.3% (19.0%) 78.8% (29.4%) 0.8
Cardinal 38.8% | (123%) | 78.8% (40.0%) 0.6
City of New Orleans 76.6% (6.1%) 85.0% (8.4%) 11
Coast Starlight 76.3% | (13.6%) | 78.8% (2.5%) 1d
Crescent 72.0% (1.0%) 78.8% (6.7%) 0.3
Empire Builder 43.8% | (34.0%) | 82.7% (38.9%) (1.8)
Lake Shore Limited 55.5% | (20.3%) | 78.8% (23.3%) (06)
Palmetto 74.9% 10.6% 78.8% GB.9%) (2.0)
Silver Meteor 76.7% 3.9% 78.8% (2.0%) 0.2 v
Silver Star 70.3% (7.2%) 78.8% (8.5%) 09
Southwest Chief. 73.3% 6.9%) 80.0% (6.7%) (1.0)
Sunset Limited 79.9% (7.7%) 78.8% 11% (0.6)
Texas Eagle 55.8% (13.8%) 78.8% (23.0%) 0.8



@

U.S. Department ADMINISTRATOR: 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
of Transportation Washington, DC 20590

Federal Railroad
Administration

JAN 27 we

The Honorable Daniel K. Inouye
Chairman

Committee on Appropriations
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Mr. Chairman:

Section 154 of the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related
Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010 (Pub. L. 111-117) required the Federal Railroad
Administrator to “submit a report on April 1, 2010, and quarterly reports thereafter, to the
House and Senate Committees on Appropriations detailing the Administrator's efforts at
improving the on-time performance of Amtrak intercity rail service operating on non-
Amtrak owned property. Such reports shall compare the most recent actual on-time
performance data to pre-established on-time performance goals that the Administrator
shall set for each rail service, identified by route. Such reports shall also include whatever
other information and data regarding the on-time performance of Amtrak trains the
Administrator deems to be appropriate.” The Committee on Appropriations of the House
of Representatives expressed the intent to continue this reporting process in the Full
Committee Draft Report on the Fiscal Year 2012 Transportation, Housing and Urban
Development Appropriations Bill.

I am pleased to submit the quarterly report in accordance with this Congressional intent. I
hope that the information contained in the enclosed report will assist the Committee in its
work,

Identical letters have been sent to the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on
Appropriations, and to the Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Committee on
Appropriations.

Sincerely,

Joseph C. Szabo
Administrator

Enclosures


Amtrak On-Time Performance (OTP) Report
(As Described in Section 154 of Pub. L. 111-117)

This report includes (1) an update on recent Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) efforts to
improve Amtrak’s on-time performance and (2) Amtrak’s OTP results and performance
against FRA-established goals.

(1) OTP Highlights through Fiscal Year (FY) 2011

OTP Benefits of the High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail (HSIPR): During the fourth

quarter of Fiscal Year (FY) 2011, Secretary La Hood announced that over fifteen
additional project grants had been awarded through the FY 2010 HSIPR program. These
most recent announcements bring the total number of projects to over 145, with a total
obligation amount in excess of $9.2 billion (a complete list of selected investments is
available at http://www. fra.dot.gov/rpd/HSIPR/ProjectFunding.aspx).

The FRA, Amtrak, the States, and host railroads continue to develop service outcome
agreements to ensure the performance improvements) contemplated in the intercity
passenger rail service improvements are realized upon completion of the respective
projects. Most of the HSIPR awards will ultimately raise the effective speed of the
benefiting services, through a combination of better reliability (through capacity additions
and other means) and/or higher running speeds.

One such award in August was for $745 million for upgrading the components and/or
capacity of some of the most heavily-used sections of the Northeast Corridor (NEC),
resulting in improved on-time performance and reliability. Also in August, Secretary
LaHood announced a Federal investment of $729 million to procure new, American-built
locomotives and passenger rail cars that will operate on corridors throughout California,
Washington State, and the Midwest. These cars will be capable of traveling at speeds up
to 125 mph and will improve equipment reliability while increasing passenger capacity,
When completed, these and many other HSIPR projects are expected to directly improve
the OTP of the affected routes, as measured in this series of OTP reports to Congress.

Additionally, Amtrak is engaged in collaborative efforts to make operational performance
improvements with BNSF and the Washington State Department of Transportation. These
efforts will benefit the Cascade service in Washington State and Oregon, which recently
experienced a 0.5 mph improvement in the train’s effective speed over the benchmark set
in October 2008. Amtrak has also striven to improve performance on its Ethan Allen route
segment over the Vermont Railway. Together, Amtrak and this host railroad have
analyzed track conditions in order to pinpoint opportunities for increasing track speeds in
certain areas.

Publication of Metrics and Standards: Jointly with Amtrak, FRA developed and published
on May 12, 2010, the Metrics and Standards for intercity passenger rail services as
required by Section 207 of the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008
(PRIIA). The fourth quarterly Metrics and Standards report under Section 207 is available
on FRA’s webpage at www. fra.dot.gov/Pages/2165.shtml. The latest report provides data
on Amtrak’s financial, operational, and service quality performance for the third quarter of
FY 2011. A key feature of the operational information is the tabulation of delay minutes



that Amtrak experiences on the host railroads for each route. The data collected for the
third quarter of FY 2011 illustrates Amtrak’s reliability experiences across its system, with
host railroads exceeding applicable standards for delay minutes on most of the Amtrak
routes.

(2) Goals and Route Performance

Attachment A contains OTP statistics for all Amtrak routes through the fourth quarter of
FY 2011. The table provides three pieces of information for each route: 1) progress made
toward target goals established in 2008, 2) a comparison between FY 2011 results and the
prior year, and 3) a change in effective speed. Effective speed is defined as a metric that
uses the scheduled departure time from the origination point of a train, the actual arrival
time of that train at the scheduled endpoint, and the normal mileage that the train operates
between the normal scheduled origination point and the normal scheduled arrival point.
Throughout the history of this OTP report, progress has been focused on the latter two
metrics.

As the attachment illustrates, four routes out of forty-one had improvements in OTP (in
terms of both improved percent on time versus last year and no decrease in effective
speed) through September of FY 2011. Of those routes experiencing OTP improvement,
two (one corridor-type and one long-distance train) are meeting, or are surpassing, their
FRA-defined OTP target for FY 2011. While the OTP on Amtrak’s Northeast Cortidor
has generally been holding constant or improving, the non-NEC short-distance routes and
the long-distance routes have experienced noticeable OTP declines—even in the three-
month interval between the report in this series covering FY 2011 through June, and the
present report covering FY 2011 through September. Specifically, cumulative OTP for FY
2011 on 13 of the short-distance routes dropped by an average of 2.8 percentage points per
route from the June to the September report, while 12 long-distance routes saw an average
decline of 4.2 percentage points per route.

While these declines will inevitably reflect conditions that are site-specific to each route
and host railroad, Amtrak’s publicly-available Monthly Performance Reports (MPRs)
point to generally applicable reasons for this declining performance.! Of all the causes of
delay to Amtrak trains, the most frequently encountered is Freight Train Interference,
which rose from approximately 230 minutes per 10,000 train-miles in the September 2010
MPR to 320 minutes in September 201 1—a year-over-year increase of 40 percent. The
less-important causes of train delays did not experience comparable increases. Amtrak
works closely with the freight railroads not only to track, but also to investigate and
mitigate, these delays on a route-specific—and even ona delay-specific—basis.

Although a causal relationship has not been proven between nationwide freight traffic
levels and passenger train delay minutes on Amtrak routes due to freight train interference,
it is interesting to note that, on a year-over-year basis through the end of September 2011,
cumulative freight carloads throughout the national rail system were up 1.8 percent or
nearly 200,000 cars, and intermodal units were up 5.4 percent or 458,000 units.

"The Monthly Performance Reports are available on the Internet at
http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer/Page/124 1245669222/1241245669129, Data are from the
chart entitled “Delays to Amtrak Trains by Delay Type and Responsible Party.”